Camera-flinging Diezani

Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources courts controversy with ease. If her inept management of the subsidy sleaze should have earned her resignation, her recent disrespect to journalists before the Senate’s Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) Resources presents her as an intolerant public official. For yet-to-be deciphered reasons, the minister seems to think she is above the law. She is not!

We condemn her unabashed affront to free speech by her attempt to prevent journalists from covering her appearance before the committee by flinging away their recorders and cameras. Diezani’s security details commenced the seemingly well-rehearsed assault against reporters covering the Senate. They reportedly seized and threw away stationed recorders and cameras, an action that Senator Magnus Abe, chairman of the committee deprecated by insisting that the verbal proceedings on the probe of fuel allocation mess be recorded.

The minister, in defiance of this order, flung away a repositioned midget placed before her by a reporter from The Daily Trust. Another reporter was rudely bluffed from placing a midget before her while the minister reportedly mumbled that she could not tolerate placement of voice recorders directly in her front. We ask: How then could the important proceedings meant to proffer solutions to the perennial fuel scarcity across the country and the shameful disparity in the price of petrol, as well as what she has done so far on the promised Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the country’s refineries be put on record? Her conduct was so disgusting that some newsmen reportedly left the proceeding room in protest.

We are not in doubt that Mrs Alison-Madueke will not want to answer questions on why the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) ceded its power of allocation of petroleum products to oil unions in its locations. This has led to the disparity in petrol prices across the country from the official rate of N97 to between N110 and N115. We further ask: Why should a trade union take over the function of a statutory agency under her leadership? Why is it that only the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) trucks are allowed to load products? Is it true that hidden costs, in collaboration with the union and the security agencies, are injected into the final cost of petroleum products?

The Senator Magnus Abe-led committee should be commended for insisting that the session be recorded for posterity. However, the minister’s conduct is crude and primitive. Such is not expected from any public official, not in the least one in charge of the crucial petroleum sector. What point was she trying to prove other than to show her contempt for men of the Fourth Estate of the Realm and particularly that important legislative arm, the Senate.

Her conduct reminds of the better forgotten behaviour of Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, former governor of old Oyo State who showed contempt for journalists in the Second Republic by tearing the Reporters’ Notebook of one of them at a public function. What about the finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who refused to answer the question posed to her by The Nation’s US correspondent recently?

In the developed countries, Mrs Alison-Madueke ought to have left office a long time ago when her mismanagement of oil subsidy came to the fore. This is why we condemn her military style approach to an important arm of democratic governance and journalists performing their lawful duties.

We want to remind her of the reality that she is a minister appointed to serve the people and not vice-versa. Also, the easy way for feedback from the public is through reportage of her activities by the media that she has shown unwarranted contempt for. It is high time she purged herself of the erroneous belief that she is untouchable.